Pour L'amour De Porcs
by Lohce Azcry
Summary: Before A Machine For Pigs, Oswald Mandus has a dream.


**Pour L'amour De Porcs**

_**By Lohce Azcry**_

Oswald Mandus is a pig.

A fat, slobbering pig, pink leathery skin gleaming from sweat. His snout prods the metal floor, trying to push it away to get the food that is obviously there. He, along with the hundreds of other pigs, can practically taste the aroma of rotten fruit drifting in the air, and since there is nothing but solid copper walls surrounding them, the only place it could be, his small pig mind concluded, is in the ground. That is where all food is.

And yet he is dimly aware that he is, in fact, not a pig, but a very wealthy man of industry, and that he is not in a copper room full of other pigs but is sleeping in his lavish bed in his expensive house. But this is a small and transparent thought, and soon it quickly fades away to the corners of his sleeping brain. He and the other pigs continue their fruitless search for the food that is not there, sometimes snorting when they bump into each other. His pig mind knows that the room is large, and that it is very, very hot. The heat is everywhere; on the walls, in the air, on the bodies massed around him, and it is so heavy and solid, like invisible smoke.

An uneasy feeling sends small waves of panic through him. The heat doesn't feel right. None of this feels right. The floor will not part not matter how hard his hooves smash or scratch, and the fact there are so many pigs around him is unnerving. In the background he hears the sound of heavy machinery and gears turning, rumbling like a sleeping dog, and he feels his heartbeat quicken.

_In the belly of the monster,_ a thought mutters, but it too is quickly shoved away.

His ears pick up the sound of squealing and he pauses, looking up with beady black eyes in mild curiosity. He'd much rather occupy himself with searching for food, but the squeal startled him, and his mind demanded he find the source of the surprise. Another squeal erupts from the other side of the room, followed by another from his side, until a mass of shrieks shatters the rumbling silence. He does not join them, but begins to back up, pushing his way past masses of pink until his rump hits hot metal. The fear that was once a shadow has grown into a black mass that was quickly filling his heart, which was hammering against his chest.

A full minute of wailing goes by before a sharp groan interrupts, like the sound of scared pigs had angered something. A few snouts close, but the sense of terror remains. Soon the groaning starts again, a heavy roar of grating metal, and to Oswald's shock he sees the wall to his right slowly begin to part until it leaves a small gap. Further down, he can see small pricks of light leading away from the room.

At first, they are silent. He snorts in fear. Again, the feeling of not-rightness is persistent, mixing with the heat in the air. But then he smells the food again, and this time it is stronger, wafting from the opening in hot, delicious waves, filling his mouth with saliva.

Soon the other pigs smell it too, and begin to pour out of the room and into wherever the gap leads, squealing and snorting as their fat bodies squeeze against each other. Some loose their footing and are pushed to the floor, only for their faces to be trampled by a hundred hooves. His mind urges him to go forward, towards the food, but he doesn't want to. He's scared of what may be beyond the space in the wall. It reminded him of a wolf holding it's jaw open, ready to swallow every pink pig scrambling through it.

And yet, he find himself unconsciously lifting a hove forward. He is reminded again that he is still a pig, and therefore basic primal urges take control. There is food beyond the opening, and his brain demands he go find it, even if there is something bad at the end.

So it is not long before he find himself the last pig to leave the room and timidly entering a long corridor. Grey pipes lined the floor and ceiling, small slivers of steam escaping from loose nuts. Beyond them, small flashes of stone wall appear, smothered under the metal. The floor is flat metal, clicking under his hooves with each step. High above him small yellow lamps nailed to the wall cast dim yellow light.

He jumps when he hears screeching metal behind him, and whirls around. The gap in the wall is gone, leaving only blank copper in it's place.

In the back of his mind the human part of his brain protests. _Danger!,_ it screams, _There is danger at the end of this!_ But he continues, ignoring it. He passes a few spinning gears and pauses, trying to see where the trail of circles ended, but is unable to see past the small space in the ceiling allowing the machinery to climb to the level above him. Grunting in frustration, he moves on.

He reaches the end of the corridor and halts. The walls and ceiling have changed, now, switching to flat grey metal. The dead end confuses him, and he turns again in hopes that another gap has appeared, but nothing has changed.

But he does not have long to ponder this. He squeals and quickly backs up as a wall of metal shoots upwards and slams into the ceiling, trapping him inside a metal box. Terror washes over him. He slams his hooves against the wall, squealing, feeling the box jolt and begin to move. He regrets coming here, for he now knows there is no food. It was a clever trap to entice him here, into this horrible box. If he had only stayed, if he had only heeded his now silent warnings, he wouldn't be in here.

And then the box jolted, and the walls slid below him, and Oswald saw.

Before him was a long, black conveyor belt, slick with blood and guts. Sharp metal knives, hooks and other cutting objects attached to robotic arms hung around the belt. Beyond that, another hallway, ceiling dotted with curved meat hooks, carried away freshly skinned pig carcasses around a corner. Below him, he could see more of these horrible belts in neat rows, pigs slowly being carved open by quick stabs and slashes. All he could hear was screeching, horrible, blood curdling wailing from the pigs in the process of being butchered, and soon he too began to join them as he frantically tried to back away.

But the small platform he was on gave a sudden jerk downward, sliding him onto the belt before begin carried away by something unseen. He heard a small click and looked down at four copper cuffs clamping onto his hooves. He shrieked, he wailed, he screamed, struggling against his bonds as the belt roared to life and began pulling him forward.

Any rational thought was out of the question. Oswald, both as pig and human, was terrified beyond words. The heat was alive, an intense inferno cooking his body and soul. He now smelt rotting flesh and blood, and in the corner of his eye he saw a pig on the line next to him give one final squeal before it's pink skin was ripped off.

He approached the knives and hooks and watched them jerk to life, drills spinning as if testing themselves out, knives slashing at the air. Even though he knew it was useless, he still struggled, praying that the cuffs would snap, that the machinery would malfunction, that he would wake up.

_Wake up!_ he screamed at himself, because he knew what would happen next and he didn't care if it was just a dream, because the fear would kill him before the curved carving knife would ever penetrate his skin, _Wake up! Wake up!_

A small knife moved up to his face, light reflecting off it's shiny metal. And then it was an eye, a gleaming eye with silver slits for a pupil, and it was looking at him, _glaring_ at him, and all he could do was look back in total, unadulterated horror, because he was looking into the eye of the monster and that the monster was this place, this horrible place in his dream.

_Oh Oswald,_ the eye said, _you know better than I do this isn't a dream._

And it lunged.


End file.
